My husband and I moved to San Diego from New York City in 2003. In the city, you might get a craving for a dish or see a nice recipe in the paper, and just grab all the ingredients on the way home from work. We stuck to this system when we got to California, and one day at the market, the checkout girl said, “Wow, you’re here every night”. It was then that we noticed that people actually used those gigantic carts, filling them up with supplies for the week and avoiding traffic and parking on weeknights.

We took the plunge and I started planning weekly menus, like normal people I supposed. But when I mentioned this to a few people, I realized this was not normal at all. A good friend mostly relied on ’scrounging’, eating green-beans or cereal or whatever happened to be in the fridge on a given night. She was astounded by this planning thing and asked to see an average menu. I checked in with my brother, who also shops weekly (in Texas, where the car culture is much the same), but he was shocked to hear how little we spent on food. He wanted to see a menu. Turns out our budget is low mostly because we stick to whole foods, and only eat meat or fish about once a week.

Then in 2007 we joined a local CSA program, and planning meals got to be even more fun. I was keeping all of these menus in a drawer anyway, thinking I might reuse them some day, but eventually the drawer was overflowing, and I decided to go digital.